


Bloom and Grow

by LadyHoneydee



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Botanist Zelda, F/M, First Meetings, Link (Legend of Zelda) is a Dork, Meet-Cute, Romance, Zelda is thirsty, chef link
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28562715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHoneydee/pseuds/LadyHoneydee
Summary: Botanist by trade and hiker by hobby, Zelda Bosphoramus tries her hand at a storied mountain trail while attending a conference in Lurelin. All Zelda wants is to observe some local specimens at Tuft Mountain's lofty summit, but she finds more than pretty flowers waiting for her on the shores of Lover's Pond...
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 104





	Bloom and Grow

Really, all of this was Zelda’s own fault. 

It was her idea to make a presentation on the differences in growing habits of silent princesses based on geographical regions (a damn good presentation, if she said so herself). It was her idea to represent her tiny botany lab at the three-day, all-expenses-paid, 19th annual Lurelin Association of Botanists conference. It was her idea to try to clear her head from so much theoretical plant matter at the conference with some actual plant matter on one of the local hiking trails on her day off. And it was her idea to sleep in until nearly noon on said day off, absolutely exhausted after three days of absorbing every bit of botanical knowledge she possibly could. 

She’d awakened that morning bleary-eyed, mouth sticky, to an ungodly shriek. Zelda had grown all too familiar with such a wake-up call over the last few days, as the shriek belonged to the rather verbose seagull which apparently nested on the deck of her bungalow rental. The owners definitely had  _ not _ warned potential renters about the loathsome creature’s ability to burst eardrums in their listing—but then, they hadn’t espoused its usefulness, either. The gull had been an irritatingly reliable alarm clock all three mornings of the conference; it made even her trusty alarm app unnecessary. These past three days of behavioral observation had assured Zelda that her feathered housemate would blast her into awareness at 8am on the dot for her free day, ready to conquer a mountain if not the world. 

Behavioral observation had meant jack shit. The hateful bird had left her high and dry this morning and she had lost half a day because of it.

_ This is why I study  _ plants, she’d thought, and proceeded to fall on her face getting out of her hammock.

Zelda had stretched the twenty-minute drive to the trailhead to over thirty, tossing up thick clouds of dust from the skinny gravel roads as she took the curves slowly and the areas shaded with palm trees slower. Even on her supposed day off, she just couldn’t resist pausing every fifty or so yards to marvel from the driver’s seat at the subtle differences in leaf shapes and trunk texture between species, and record the most interesting observations in the notebook she kept in her trail pack. 

And now, two hours later, she was wiping sweat off her brow and tugging her long, blonde ponytail away from where it was plastered to the back of her neck. 

Out of all of Zelda’s hikes over the last two years, this one took the cake. Tuft Mountain, Central Faron. 2:13 in the afternoon. Late spring. About a thousand percent humidity. And completed with sunbeams that were truly scorching. Despite her penchant for hiking to collect specimens for the lab since she began working there as an intern during her last year of undergrad, Zelda’s skin had never been able to achieve a shade darker than lily-white; having stupidly forgone sunscreen in her rush out of the bungalow, she could feel her exposed shoulders roasting into a shade better befitting a tomato than a twenty-five year old botanist under the spotlight of the Faronese sun. 

Zelda shaded her eyes with her hand and peered up at the peak of the mountain. It wasn’t too far off now, and according to the trail guide she’d picked up in the trailhead parking lot, the main attraction of the hike wasn’t even at the summit. Zelda’s friend Mipha had recommended the hike to her rather insistently over the last few times the friends had met up, spinning some yarn about how worthy hikers would meet their soulmate at the heart-shaped pond at the top of the trail. Said pond was featured prominently in the pamphlet’s thumb-sized pictures, but weirdly without a single mention of the folk legend Mipha had talked her ear off about over dinner last week. Not that it mattered. The only connection Zelda yearned for at this moment was between her sweaty, aching feet and the pristine water that awaited her.

The flora she had been so pumped to observe on her hike was turning out to be a little disappointing. As the altitude increased, the plant biodiversity decreased, shifting gradually from the abundance of greenery and the sturdy palms that had shaded the trailhead giving way to the sea buckthorns that populated the first half mile of the hike. The buckthorns, too, began to fade off as the trail increased in elevation. After about a mile of the trail crunching under her boots, they’d fully subsided; only the occasional scraggly bush remained. They clung desperately to the sandy sides of the trail, and Zelda couldn’t for the life of her identify what species the bushes were.

For all they lacked in beauty, the shrubs made up for in persistence. Zelda had admired them as she trekked past, following the switchbacks up the mountain’s face. The air grew thinner but the humidity no less oppressive as she ascended, and she found herself having to place her boots with more care on the inland side of the mountain as the windblown topsoil shifted under them. The final stretch, though, was exposed rock in shades of mottled greys and browns, hard on the knees, but easy on the eyes. The primordial ancestors of the botany world clung here: sparse lichens in a greyish green that reminded Zelda of the muted color palette of the lab back in Castleton. She’d been hiking past lichens for the last twenty minutes or so, and they showed no sign of letting up. 

Still, Zelda always had a soft spot for plants with a little more showmanship. She held out hope for the area around the pond itself. The grainy photographs in the trail guide showed several interesting floral specimens she couldn’t wait to get her hands on.

Gleefully distracted by the thought of studying native Lurelin plants with her own two eyes, Zelda didn’t notice as the craggy, semi-steep slope she’d been doggedly ascending for the last two hours abruptly flattened out. She took a step up that proved to be empty air, and stumbled. Wobbled for a moment. Waved her arms wildly for balance. 

The wash of relief as she finally steadied herself was instantly swept away when she looked up from her scruffy boots and into a pair of amused blue eyes.

He was on the other side of the pond (which was, amazingly, just as heart-shaped as the photographs had advertised). Probably around her age, maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven, with a slim build and a capable stance that she found herself envying. He was at rest, but looked as if could leap into action at any moment, like a coiled spring just waiting to be unleashed. Some hikers wore their gear like a costume; something to gather dust in a back closet and wait to be used. He wore his dark blue t-shirt and tan zip-off pants like a second skin. His hair was the precise blond shade of Zelda’s favorite wildflower honey, and it shagged around his face before being pulled back into a practical little ponytail. And there was something—something  _ familiar _ —about him that she couldn’t quite put a finger on.

“You alright over there?” he called, and Zelda reeled at the sound of his voice. What in Nayru’s blue seas, he sounded like someone she’d known her whole life, but she’d never even  _ met  _ him before, what the fuck—

“I’m just dandy, thanks!” she replied, and cringed. 

The guy didn’t seem to notice her stilted language or forced cheerfulness. He gave her a thumbs-up and knelt down to fiddle with his shoelaces, the conversation apparently over.

Bemused, Zelda shrugged off her trail pack and chucked it off to the side; the weight of both the pack and the jarring familiarity lifting from her shoulders. Luckily, the little—clearing? was clearing the right word for a mountain?—was just as pretty as she’d hoped. She’d grown up hearing stories about the flawless aquamarine of Hyrule’s eastern sea, and damn if it didn’t live up to its reputation. The sun that had been so burdensome on her hike made the water sparkle like diamonds, and the beauty of it knocked the breath right out of her. To the west, she could make out the grassy highlands and rainforests of Faron, and the quaint beach town of Lurelin with its bustling port to the east. On the landing itself, fine grass carpeted the area around the Lover’s Pond, and Zelda paused to appreciate it. Her eyelids fluttered closed at the lovely, mellow aroma, still sweet with the newness of spring. 

Even more to Zelda’s interest than the view and the grass were the several different species of flowers growing in small clusters around the pond. Just looking at them summoned a grin. At last, at last, her chance to study local flora! Zelda unceremoniously dropped to her knees next to one such grouping and began to observe them. 

She had forgotten her field guide next to her bottle of sunscreen on the kitchen table of the bungalow, but part of her thrilled to the challenge of identifying unfamiliar plant species without it. The cup shape of the yellow species tipped her off right away that they were some variety of poppy. Zelda had never seen such a poppy of such a mild yellow before, though. She squinted at the petals as if the color would transition to something more typical if she stared long enough. Perhaps they were only native to Lurelin? The cone head of the salmon-colored flower reminded her of warm safflina. But that variety of safflina was native to hotter climes throughout Hyrule, rather than this mountaintop, which was only warmed by the sun and the humidity. Zelda wondered if it was an attempt at mimicry. Safflina’s natural heat made it uncomfortable for most mammals to eat fresh from the plant; if this mimic species could avoid being a snack for whatever creatures came foraging up here, that would only be a boon. The little blue flowers closest to the pond, however—

_ Sploosh! _

—were now soaking wet.

Zelda rounded on the culprit of the wave that had wrecked her flowers. Instead of remaining on the shore where she had last seen him, Mr. Weirdly Familiar now stood knee-deep in the shallow end of the pond, looking altogether too pleased with himself. The reason for his shoelace fidgeting now dawned on her, as his boots had long since fled the scene. And he was...wearing shorts now? Hadn’t he been wearing pants before? What—oh. The zip-off pants. The removable portion of his pant legs were strewn rather haphazardly next to his boots and socks, looking an awful lot like very large, very tan, very weird caterpillars. 

As if on cue, Caterpillar Pants glanced up from the water and met her stare. Zelda nearly found herself entranced by the boyish gleam in his eyes and the ruddiness in his cheeks...but no! This guy had ruined her specimens! She couldn’t forgive him just because he was cute!

She planted her hands on her hips.

“ _ Excuse  _ me, I was just studying those flowers!” She glared at the guy, who didn’t seem nearly concerned enough about the situation, with those sparkling eyes and that sunshiney grin.

“Ah, I’m sorry, miss?” he offered.

“Are you?  _ Are  _ you? Are you  _ really _ ? Because I’ve seen politicians more contrite than you look right now.”

The guy leaned back away from her, lips twisted into a grimace that didn’t reach his eyes. Even mock-disgust seemed oddly out of place on him. “Oh, Farore, please don’t compare me to those bloodsuckers.” He couldn’t seem to stay serious though: a grin slowly brightened his face again, crinkling his eyes and—oh no. He had dimples. Cute little pools of dimples that Zelda found somehow more attractive than even the real-life pond their owner stood in.

Something about his honest mirth (and those damned dimples) made Zelda crack a smile too, despite her best efforts to keep her jaw set and eyes narrowed. “What’s your name, bloodsucker?”

“You wound me, miss.” He placed his hand against his chest, mock-wounded. “I’m Link. Link Firly.”

“Link Firly…” Zelda mused.  _ Why  _ did that sound so familiar? It felt like something on the tip of her tongue, something she should never have forgotten but had anyway. She squinted at his face. He really was attractive, this Link Firly. Besides those dimples, he had that tanned skin, those fine-boned features, those  _ eyes _ , bluer than the sky above.  _ Why  _ did those eyes look so familiar?  _ Why  _ couldn’t she remember?

“That’s me,” he said. He hunched his shoulders just a bit and tugged at the end of his little ponytail under her intense scrutiny. 

“Link...Firly.” Even his stance, the way he held his tension in his shoulders and the erectness of his spine, seemed familiar. Had she seen him around before? At the Lurelin conference, maybe, or at the lab back in Castleton? Neither of those felt right, but that face and that  _ voice _ , it was like she’d heard him speaking every day— _ oh! _

“Wait! Like the guy who lives in the apartment next door to me in Castleton, Link Firly? Like the guy who I hear talking to his sister every night on the phone because the walls are so thin, Link Firly? Like the guy whose gaming keyboard  _ I  _ had to sign for because your mail always ends up at  _ my  _ address and then you never open the door when I knock, Link Firly?”

Link blanched to a shade somewhere on the color spectrum between celery and stark white. “ _ You’re  _ Zelda Bosphoramus? Oh, Din. Oh no. W-what are you doing here?”

Just what had she done to this poor man? Zelda watched as Link started to shift more, his eyes darting away from her face, and she belatedly remembered he’d asked her a question. “Botany conference.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly, slipping the hair tie from around his wrist to fidget it around his fingers. “Well, I’d wondered why you looked familiar. Over there across the pond, that is. And now. Especially now.” Link winced, probably embarrassed of the stilted delivery of his last few sentences, but Zelda was too energized by this similarity between them to pay it any mind.

“You too!?” she burst out, leaning forward slightly. “I thought I was going crazy. But I guess I’ve just seen you around the building before.”

“I’ve definitely seen you!” Link blurted, and then flushed redder than Zelda’s sunburn at the zeal of his admission.

_ Nayru, he’s cute.  _

“Well, I suppose it’s good to meet you at last, then, neighbor.” Zelda stepped forward to the bank of the pond, hand outstretched. Despite his embarrassment, Link shook it firmly. His hands were rough, calloused, sure of himself in a way his words weren’t, and when his palm met her own Zelda felt a veritable spark of electricity crackle from her hand to her toes and back again. She stifled a shiver.

“Nice to meet you too, Zelda.”

Oh, she  _ did  _ like the way he said her name.

Zelda leaned down to untie her own boots and strip off her socks, tossing them back in the direction of her trail pack. “I guess it’s kinda—“ She broke off, searching for the proper word “— _ serendipitous _ that we met for the first time here instead of back home in Castleton, huh? What are you doing here in Faron?” 

“My grandma and Aryll—she’s my little sister, the one I talk to every night?” Zelda dipped her head in recognition, smiling to herself at the self-assured way he said it, rather than acting too cool for his younger sister. 

Seeing her nod, Link continued. “They live in Lurelin now. Well, Grandma always lived in Lurelin, Aryll just moved here last winter, but anyway, I got a week off from work at the restaurant to come visit them.” That contagious, dangerous grin from earlier resurfaced. Zelda’s heart tripped unsteadily at the sight. 

Zelda plopped down on a sun-warmed rock on the deeper side and dangled her legs into the pond, the deliciously chilly waters heaven to her overheated, sore feet. A sigh of satisfaction escaped her, and she revelled in the coolness for a moment before turning back to face Link. If she was going to have a conversation instead of study plants, she may as well do it thoroughly.

“Restaurant? Are you a chef?” 

“Sous-chef,” Link answered, splashing his way along the bank of the pond until he could sit down beside her. “I work at Gotter’s; you know that place downtown?”

“The one with the dishes based on recipes from the old legends? The hero of the wild, hero of time, all those guys? Of course I do! Me and my friend Mipha go there for dinner and drinks like every week!”

Link looked delightfully flattered. “Ah, well, I’m glad you like it!” His brow furrowed thoughtfully, and one of those lovely hands of his floated up to touch his chin. “You’ve probably had something made by me at least once or twice before, then.” 

Zelda’s cheeks heated, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Of course  _ someone  _ had to have cooked the food she’d eaten every week for years, but it was something else entirely to meet the chef responsible in the flesh. And for him to be so attractive....

They chatted more about their jobs and lives, swirling their feet in the water. Zelda found herself unable to keep eye contact for too long—something about that icy blue gaze of his made her want to do something stupid, like touch his hand, or ask if he wanted to roll around in a field of daisies with her. Thankfully, there was an abundance of aquatic vegetation to observe now that she had given up on the flowers, and they were marvelous distractors. A patch of algae bloomed on the edge of the pond to her right; some sort of feathery frond fluttered at the bottom of the pond directly beneath her. Her fingers clenched and  _ ached  _ with the urge to sketch it. She  _ needed  _ to sketch it. 

But…

But she wanted to talk to Link, too. 

Zelda had never before felt so torn between learning about a fellow human or studying flora in her life, her edges raw with too much wanting. When she voiced her struggle, tempering it with a wry grin that was more of a baring of teeth, she expected Link to take it as a joke. Instead, he surprised her by offering to dive down and retrieve a sample for her. His eyes told her that he, too, knew something of want.

She refused the sample on principle, preferring to leave the plants she studied untouched unless she was bringing material back to the lab for testing. Link shrugged, blithely accepting her answer. Then he stripped off his shirt and cannonballed into the pond. 

Rather stunned, Zelda stared blankly at the bubbles that rose to the surface of the water, tracking Link’s underwater lap of the pond. She was as hypnotized by the ten miles of perfect golden skin Link had so casually unearthed as she was touched by the kindness that seemed to come so naturally to him. The two reactions frothed within her stomach to form a volatile cocktail of admiration.

Link popped his head out of the water, gasping for air, and Zelda hurried to wipe the incriminatingly dopey look off of her face as he turned to face her. He executed a flawless freestyle stroke towards her, pausing about three feet away from where Zelda’s own pale legs kicked aimlessly in the water. Their conversation began anew as he alternated treading water, swimming in circles, and randomly diving underwater to turn somersaults. The way he frolicked in the water drove Zelda to distraction. He was amphibious in his fluidity: a miraculous creature, a wonder of the world. And he was awfully, marvelously interested in what she had to say. 

Link learned that Zelda plants had captivated Zelda ever since she was a little girl, although her fascination at age ten revolved more around the symbolic language of flowers than the scientific language now part and parcel of her career at age twenty-five. Zelda found out that the eponymous restaurant owner and head chef of the restaurant Link worked at was the researcher behind the legendary recipes, and Link was the guy who brought them back to life with modern ingredients and tools. 

“I only learned how not to burn toast two years ago!” Zelda bemoaned when Link came up for air after a series of convoluted gymnastic maneuvers. “You must be a cooking genius!”

The compliment didn’t seem to register, though. Link, now treading water, had checked out of the conversation and into his own little world somewhere around the word “toast”. His brows scrunched higher and higher as she spoke; confusion and disbelief clouded over the sunshine of his smile. “ _ Wait.  _ Zelda, earlier, you said the name Mipha?”

“Yeah, why?” 

“Did you mean...no, you couldn’t have.” Link spun slowly in place a few times, seemingly doubting himself. At Zelda’s reassuring glance, he took a trepidatious breath and continued. “Your friend Mipha...is she Mipha Grace? My friend Mipha Grace, nurse practitioner extraordinaire? Works in the hospital over on Ruta Avenue?”

Zelda raised her hand to her mouth, absolutely floored. “You know Mipha?!”

Link flipped onto his back and floated, arms and legs splayed like a water strider. “Yeah, we went to elementary school together, when I was still living with my parents in the Domain. I meet up with her to go swimming at the gym twice a week.”

Well, that explained his talent for it. If  _ Mipha _ was the person you were swimming with, well. Zelda knew just how fast her friend could be in the water, having been left in the dust—in the bubbles?—several times just swimming casually together. He’d have to be an exceptional swimmer just to keep up when she was being serious.

“Mipha and I met at my botany lab two years ago! She was called in to provide some expertise when our aquatics sector was researching if a particular species of algae could help accelerate the healing process in superficial wounds.” The memory brought a smile to Zelda’s face. “We went out for drinks after work at the end of the project, and the rest is history.”

Link looked mystified. “Mipha told me before that she had a friend in my building, but I never thought she meant my prett—I mean, my neighbor. I mean, you!” He took a sudden interest in Zelda’s algae patch. “Anyway, I’d seen you go in and out of your place before, but…” He trailed off, mumbling something that sounded an awful lot like, “I never had the guts to talk to you.” 

He scratched the back of his head and looked up at the sky, as if looking for divine assistance. “I, uh, I never thought that this is how we’d meet.”

Zelda smirked. Maybe it was cruel to tease a guy acting so shyly, but she couldn’t help herself. “You mean on top of a mountain hundreds of miles from home, at a pond where you’re supposed to find your soulmate?”

And thus Zelda discovered Link could do a fantastic impression of a deer in the headlights. She burst out laughing. Link pencil-dove straight underwater in response. 

When Link resurfaced, Zelda could barely choke out an “I’m kidding” between desperate guffaws. He gave her a deadpan expression in response, as if chastising her for the joke, and that only set off another gale of laughter. 

Eventually the stitch in Zelda’s side forced her to stop, although a massive grin that screamed of mischief still spread across her face. “Are you scared of me or something? Did I ruin a past life of yours?”

“No, but I’d let you ruin this one,” Link quipped, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide as if the flirtatious sentence had slipped out all on its own.

Zelda’s grin stretched wider than the horizon at the unexpected pick-up line. “Link, you smooth talker! You’ve been holding out on me.”

Emboldened by her response, Link gave a devilish little smirk; the sheer duality of it compared to his earlier shy blushes spun that previous admiration into a frenzy. “Maybe a little bit. Can I hold your hand to make it up to you?”

Zelda’s playful kick splashed half the pond into Link’s unsuspecting face. When he finished wiping his eyes and spluttering out water, he splashed her back. 

Zelda half-listened to the soft splashing of Link pulling himself out of the pool to reclaim his seat beside her as she tilted her head up to the sun. With the cool water on her feet, the grass soft beneath her palms, she felt for a moment like a plant herself. She was a fiddlehead fern, and something deep within her chest was unfurling, coaxed out of its slumber by Link’s warmth. 

“Well, I guess since we met here, at the place where you’re supposed to meet your  _ soulmate _ —” Zelda wiggled her eyebrows “—I should give you my phone number.”

“Are you asking me out?” Link asked, raising a brow in return.

“I am,” Zelda said, and met his gaze, hoping he could tell she genuinely meant it. 

The sweetest little sunrise of a smile stole across his face. “I’d like that.”

For a moment, they just beamed at each other; two wholesome idiots on a mountaintop. Zelda absorbed Link’s smile in all its facets: amused, sincere, and a little incredulous, like he couldn’t quite believe this was actually happening. Honestly, Zelda wasn’t sure if she could believe it, either. She wasn’t the type to ask guys out on impulse—not that she couldn’t, if she wanted to! Looking at guys just didn’t seem as fulfilling as looking at plants. But Link made her want to bend her own rules a bit.

“...do you have your phone on you?” she asked, after a minute or so of companionable silence.

Link did not in fact have his phone, although he turned his still-dripping front pockets inside out to search for it. Besides the survival watch on his wrist with its parachute-cord band, he didn’t seem to have much of anything on him.

“I  _ swear  _ I had it with me…” He patted his back pockets again, as if the missing device had teleported back into its rightful place since he’d last checked them. No phone appeared. “I really thought I had it with me! Maybe I left it in the car…?”

“You, sir, are an irresponsible hiker,” she teased. “What if you fell down the mountain and broke your leg?”

“I have powerful lungs,” Link said, straight-faced for all of three seconds before that irrepressible grin Zelda was already starting to adore returned.

She rolled her eyes. “Well, unless those lungs of yours can yell your phone number all the way to Castleton, they won’t do you any good. I leave Lurelin tonight and I’m not sure I can wait until you get home to talk to you again.” Her lips curved up into a smile at Link’s dumbfounded expression. “Here, I think I’ve got something…”

Not wanting to relinquish her spot next to Link, Zelda strained back and to her right to rifle through her discarded trail pack. Even with her attention on her bag, Zelda noticed how his gaze fell and caught on the skin of her midriff where her shirt rode up, and she bit back a grin. Oh, how fun it would be to tease him for that—but she could let it slide. After all, she’d done her fair share of ogling earlier. 

After about half a minute of rummaging, her hand finally closed around the smooth surface of the object she desired. Zelda triumphantly held her spare pen, lint-covered as it was, up to the sky.

“Da-da-da-daaaa!!!”

Link laughed at her antics, shoulders shaking in a way Zelda oddly found appealing. “You’ve got a pen with you, of all things? You have to be the most uber-responsible hiker I’ve ever had the fortune to come across.”

“Nah, if I were uber-responsible, I’d have a first aid kit,” she said, and Link made a show of glancing around the clearing for one. She playfully rolled her eyes again. She had a feeling she’d be doing that a lot. 

“I’m a botanist, remember? Sometimes there’s a gorgeous plant and I have to take some notes.” She clicked the pen and gestured towards him; Link’s eyes widened, realizing her intent, and gamely offered her his arm as a canvas. Zelda tried to keep her focus on the simple action of writing her phone number. Link had rather lovely forearms, tanned and muscular, and their powers of distraction were remarkable. “And sometimes,” she added, “I have to leave some notes on a gorgeous man.”

Link flushed again; Zelda decided then and there he was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen. She finished the final digit with a flourish, stepped up and out of the cool water, and stretched her arms up to the sky. Already she found herself missing her spot beside Link.

“Wait a minute,” Link said suddenly, and touched her calf as if to stop her. Even through the fabric of her pants, Zelda could feel the heat of his palm, the imprint lingering in her skin long after he removed his hand. “How did you hear about the soulmates thing if you’re not a local?”

“Mipha, actually,” Zelda answered. “She told me the story like five times. It wasn’t in the trail guide, though.”

Link shook his head, eyes trained on the Necluda Sea beyond her. “It wouldn’t be. They keep the story local so that they don’t get about twenty thousand tourists up here a year eroding the mountain and trails and everything.”

“I wonder how Mipha heard about it then?” Zelda mused. “She isn’t local. I don’t think she’s ever even visited Lurelin.”

Link sighed. “She heard it about it from me. I’d heard about it from Aryll, and she’d heard about it from Grandma, because Grandma knows everything there is to know about this place. I thought Mipha’d think the story was as quaint and cute as I did.”

“And did she?”

“I think she must’ve found it more than cute,” Link said, and met Zelda’s curious gaze. “Because she texted me this morning and said that I should go hiking up here today. Was really annoying about it, too.” At Zelda’s blank stare, Link tried again. “She made it abundantly clear that I needed to come here  _ today. _ ”

Zelda’s eyes widened. “You don’t think….”

“Yeah, I do.”

Zelda cracked a smile. “That really is just like her. She’s been hounding me about being a ‘singleton’ for almost as long as we’ve been friends.”

“It really is.” Link’s shoulders relaxed. Zelda hadn’t even realized that he was tense before, but it made her smile wider to see him more at ease. “Actually, I think I’m going to have to thank her.”

_ Oh,  _ her grin was incandescent. She was surprised Link hadn’t gone blind from it, looking only at her face like a flower to the sun.

“Well, Link, set-up or not, I’ve had a wonderful time, even if you wrecked my flowers.” She winked at him, and watched his ears flush ruby red. “Call me, or text me, okay? I mean it. I’d love to see you again.” 

She pulled on her socks and shoes and snagged her pack. It took that long for Link to unfreeze and that adorable blush to abate.

“You can count on it,  _ soulmate _ ,” Link joked, dimples flashing, and Zelda waved at him one final time before turning to make her way down the mountain. 

She’d made it about fifteen feet down the trail when her phone went off in her pocket.

_ Unknown Number: aaahhHHHH MY PHONE WAS IN MY PANTS LEG _

_ Unknown Number: And I forgot to tell you when I’d be back in town for us to meet up!! Aaghhh I knew I was never Nayru’s favorite but this is something else _

_ Unknown Number: Can I take you out for dinner when I get back to Castleton on Friday? _

_ Unknown Number: I really would like to hold your hand sometime _

Zelda laughed out loud, feeling that something in her chest bloom and reach for the sky. She spun fully around to face the top of the trail and shouted, “How do you even have cell signal up there?”

His voice echoed back: “How do you have cell signal down there?” She could practically hear the grin in his voice—a mirror image of her own.  _ Powerful lungs, indeed. _

“I’ll see you on Friday, Link! Knock on my door at 6.” 

As she floated down Tuft Mountain, Zelda couldn’t help the sensation that all the world lay at her feet. Maybe it was the afternoon sunlight spinning the sparse vegetation and the sandy trail and the rolling greens of the Faronese grasslands below into pure gold. Maybe it was the sparkling sea to her left as she descended, the blue of it that had been so astounding from the mountaintop just slightly dimmer to her gaze now that her eyes had met the blue of  _ his.  _ Maybe she was far gone already, falling a little too fast for a gentle wit and a set of dimples. But the sun shone on her head and in her heart, and this wasn’t falling, this was  _ flourishing _ .

She couldn’t wait to see how they would grow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoyed my little soulmate bait-and-switch; I was inspired by a particular dear friend who isn't fond of the idea of fate, and matchmaker Mipha is a concept I just couldn't resist for these two goofballs. And thank you to my lovely beta readers and friends who assisted me on the journey to Bloom and Grow: midnasass, shadow_djinni, and GourdKin! They're all incredible writers, and I highly recommend their works. 
> 
> Also, Nintendo, if you're reading this...BotW2 when?????????


End file.
